Sunday, July 31, 2011

In order to sell a new line of miniature action figures, Hasbro & Marvel decided to produce an animated series based on said toys, hence The Marvel Super Hero Squad Show, which bowed in the US on Cartoon Network in 2009, but reportedly is headed over to DisneyXD later this year.

Unlike the more serious Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, currently on DisneyXD, the Squad is a lighter, maybe even campy, take on the classic heroes & villains populating the Marvel Universe. Shoot, Stan Lee, who created a great deal of those characters, plays the Mayor of Super Hero City.

Following is a sample clip:

The target audience might love it, but older kids? I'm not entirely sure. Cartoon Network must've given up on it before the deal was struck to move the series to DisneyXD, because at last check, the Squad were airing in an earlier, ratings-challenged airslot. There are, however, better ways, to make a comedy show like this work......

Friday, July 29, 2011

With Cartoon Network launching a new version of the series this weekend, I thought it might be a good time to reflect back on the original ThunderCats, which ran in syndication from 1985-1990. It was the first series produced by Rankin-Bass for syndication since the 60's, and the first ongoing series since 1973, after ABC had cancelled the last 3 series the studio had produced for the network (Kid Power, The Osmonds, & The Jackson 5ive).

ThunderCats was set on "Third Earth", where Lion-O and his team had settled after leaving their homeworld, Thundera. Everyone has their favorite characters, including sexy Cheetara, and the ThunderKittens, WilyKat and his sister, WilyKit. Here is the opening everyone remembers:

DC Comics' WildStorm imprint produced a series of miniseries that brought the Cats back into the public eye, and also allowed for the characters to age some, particularly WilyKit (who now rivaled Cheetara as eye candy for the boys) and WilyKat. There was also a crossover with another TV icon, Battle of the Planets, which saw Keyop fall in love with WilyKit, as memory serves. Those books may have been part of the impetus that led to the new TV series, but it's safe to say the Cats have had a following rivaling that of fellow 80's icons The Transformers and GI Joe, who've also been revived in recent years. The new series, then, has a lot to live up to, and we'll see the results soon enough.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Before he hit the gold mine with Cartoon Network's Ed, Edd, & Eddy, animator Danny Antonacci's 1st series aired on MTV in 1994.

The Brothers Grunt attempted to merge together the irreverent humor of Beavis & Butt-Head with a homage/parody of old school crooners like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and so on. In fact, the missing brother who escapes in the following open, Perry, is an analog for Perry Como.

Following is the episode, "The Detective":

Just for kicks, Beavis & Butt-Head actually guest-starred in one episode, but it didn't help. The Grunts didn't last very long, a little more than a year, and their inclusion in the archives is because the series did air early on Saturdays (6 am ET, as I recall) at the end of the run. I believe Antonacci also did some interstital animation for MTV as well around the same time frame. If he has reacquired the rights to his earlier creation, I'd not be surprised if he shopped it to Cartoon Network for future use. It'd be a surprise, though, if they turned it down.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

This particular installment of Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave & The Bold has not yet aired here in the US, and is only available now on iTunes & YouTube, but it has aired in the UK.

Two days ago, "magicdog", who frequents the Toon Zone message boards, sent me this teaser segment from the Brave & The Bold, which marks the first-ever team-up of Batman and................Space Ghost! The producers, paying homage to the 1966 series, used a Space Ghost title card and intro music, and even brought in the definitive voice of Space Ghost himself, Gary Owens, who hadn't essayed the part in 30 years (Space Stars, 1981-82). PJonDevelopment gets the credit for uploading "Space Safari" to YouTube:

Now, it's just a question of when, not if, the idiots at Cartoon Network will air this episode, as there is talk that they've decided to cancel Brave & The Bold without finishing the 3rd & final season. If they don't, you may have to wait for a DVD release.

I see this as a possible back-door pilot for a possible revival, but as you can tell, Gary Owens just doesn't have the full use of his voice anymore. Seeing as how Diedrich Bader was able to base his Batman voice on Kevin Conroy's seminal portrayal of the Dark Knight from the 90's, he might be willing to test the limits of his vocal abilities......

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Trollkins, from Hanna-Barbera, had the misfortune of being slotted directly opposite another of the studio's freshman entries, Smurfs. Small wonder, then, that Trollkins lasted just one season, and is a mere footnote, while the Smurfs lasted almost a full decade. Muttley16 uploaded the open, which includes an episode title card.......

Trollkins was inspired in part by the line of troll dolls, but also by the popular primetime series, The Dukes of Hazzard, which would later spawn its own Saturday morning counterpart, also on CBS, 18 months later. Currently, the series languishes in the Cartoon Network vaults.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Hanna-Barbera's reputation for using live-action series as templates for their cartoons is well known. For example, Jackie Gleason's seminal Honeymooners begat The Flintstones. Similarly, You'll Never Get Rich (aka Sgt. Bilko) begat Top Cat, and All in the Family's early success led the studio to create Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home, a syndicated domestic sitcom that premiered in 1972. Locally, Father followed the 6:00 news on Sundays.

Tom Bosley, two years prior to Happy Days, was cast as Harry Boyle, the Father in the title, which might have prepared him for his seminal role as Howard Cunningham on Days.

Hewey1972 uploaded the open:

There have been some that have asked about a revival, after episodes have turned up on Cartoon Network & Boomerang. I don't think so, not when you consider Fox has a glut of domestic comedies now, what with Matt Groening's The Simpsons and Seth MacFarlane's trilogy (Family Guy, American Dad, & The Cleveland Show), plus MacFarlane being green-lighted to revive The Flintstones, also for Fox.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Toby Danger was created as a satire/homage of the 60's adventure series, Jonny Quest, and was a short-term backup feature on Freakazoid!, one of the last series that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment would produce in collaboration with WB.

The producers reunited most of the voice cast of the 1985 Quest revival, but the one big difference was that unlike Jonny, Toby has a sister, Sandra, who seems to be in the right place at the right time.

Here's a sample clip:

Regrettably, Toby Danger would be one of Don Messick's last gigs, as he passed away 2 years later. As the opening shows, the animation was a combination of the toon noir created by Paul Dini & Bruce Timm 3 years earlier, coupled with a homage to the original Quest character designs by its series creator, artist Doug Wildey. While low ratings ultimately doomed Freakazoid!, it also ensured that Toby would not be spun off into his own series, although he certainly deserved it.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Filmation's Space Sentinels had one strike against it when it debuted in 1977. The studio had sold the series to NBC, which had bombed out with the last offering from Filmation, The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty. Unfortunately, if NBC was hoping to recapture the sci-fi audience that had helped make the animated Star Trek so successful for 2 years, they were disappointed.

Alternately known as the Young Sentinels, the series focused on a trio of Earthlings transported to a distant world for training. Hercules (George DiCenzo) and Mercury (Evan Kim) took their names from the gods of myth. Astria, an African-American (or was she just African?) shape-shifter, rounded out the team. Apparently, Filmation didn't learn anything from the last team that relied on a computer as its leader (Butch Cassidy, a 1973 Hanna-Barbera entry for----wait for it----NBC), either. Most of the action fans opted to tune to ABC.

Here's the intro:

Had the Sentinels been on another network, like maybe, CBS, there may have been a better chance at renewal, but we'll never know for sure. The series was cancelled after 1 season, just like Waldo Kitty, and would be replaced by The Fabulous Funnies on NBC's schedule the next year.

Freeman Gosden & Charles Correll are better known as the creators of Amos & Andy, the legendary radio show which later made a brief transition to television with an all-African American cast. (Gosden & Correll, ironically, were white). The TV version didn't have the staying power of its radio counterpart, however.

Undaunted, Gosden & Correll took one more whack at TV with an animated series that was in part inspired by Amos & Andy. Calvin & The Colonel debuted on ABC in 1961 as one of two new primetime series that year (Top Cat was the other). However, only one season's worth of episodes were produced, and then the show was moved to Saturday mornings the following year, hence its inclusion here.

Calvin came from producers Joe Connolly & Bob Mosher (Leave it to Beaver), who'd been writers for Amos & Andy and their production company, Kayro, which was affiliated with Revue Studios (Universal). Creston Studios handled the animation.

Here's a sample episode:

Based on what I've seen via YouTube, this show deserved a better fate. I am not sure if it's been released on DVD as of this writing.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

After leaving In Living Color, Jim Carrey became one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, and three of his films were later transitioned into Saturday morning cartoons.

The Mask, which began as a comic book series from Dark Horse Comics, debuted on CBS in August of 1994, the early start likely because of the US Open tennis tournament. Carrey didn't reprise his role as mild-mannered Stanley Ipkiss, aka The Mask, but then again, he didn't do the animated adaptations of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective or Dumb & Dumber, either. Rob Paulsen was cast as Ipkiss, and also sings the show's theme song:

The Mask later transitioned into weekday syndication before being picked up on cable for a time. Series creator John Arcudi wrote two episodes of the series, and it's clear he drew his inspiration for the series from Tex Avery's manic shorts for MGM & WB in the Golden Age. Sadly, the series has not been seen in several years.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

The emergence of stunt cyclist Evel Knievel during the 70's served as the inspiration for Hanna-Barbera's short-lived series, Devlin, one of four 1st year series the studio sold to ABC in 1974 (The others? Hong Kong Phooey, These Are The Days, & the live-action Korg: 70,000 B. C..).

Ernie Devlin (Michael Bell) was the star attraction of a traveling circus, and employed brother Todd (Micky Dolenz, ex-The Monkees) and sister Sandy (newcomer Michelle Robinson) as his assistants. The series illustrated that dangers that go with the business. Unfortunately, Devlin was slotted near the bottom of the ABC lineup, as memory serves, and was cancelled after 1 season.

ClassicTelevisionFan uploaded the open:

Like a lot of marginal H-B characters, Ernie would later resurface on the [adult swim] series, Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law. Here, the writers allowed Ernie to age, making him an elderly retiree (voiced by King of the Hill's Toby Russ), which would suggest that in his own series, Ernie was in early 30's. Sadly and predictably, Ernie wasn't treated with respect in his two appearances.

I barely remember seeing this series during its initial run, but from what I can recall, it might've been the family angle that prevented Devlin, as well as These Are The Days, from gaining a firm foothold with viewers.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Toward the end of the 90's, someone at Sony decided that Jeopardy! had become enough of a franchise such that it warranted a spin-off or two. Yes, I said, two.

One was Jep!, geared for children and broadcast on the Game Show Network (now known simply as GSN), a Sony-owned cable network. The other was Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, which aired on Viacom-owned VH1, rather than the more obvious MTV, which at that time didn't know a good thing when they saw it.

Rock & Roll Jeopardy! enjoyed a 3 year run on VH1 from 1998-2001, and the show's format was exactly the same as the regular Jeopardy!, but aimed at the teen/young adult demographic. Jeff Probst, formerly of the rival FX cable network at that time, was hired as host. PopArgot uploaded the opening portion to this episode from September 1998:

As with most programming on the MTV Networks family of stations, Rock & Roll Jeopardy! aired at various times during the week in addition to its Saturday morning berth. Alas, the ratings inevitably began to drop with the constant schedule shuffling that has become commonplace, and the series was cancelled. Of course, Jeff Probst has fared pretty well since then, what with a nice little show on CBS you may have heard of. Survivor. Next year, Probst will add a daytime talk show to his workload, according to the latest rumors. As for Rock & Roll Jeopardy!? I assume Sony owns the rights to the show, but they're in no hurry to give it a slot on GSN.

Samurai Pizza Cats debuted in Japan in 1990, producing 54 episodes over the course of one year. The series was imported to the US by Haim Saban, who at the time was best known as a theme music composer (i.e. Inspector Gadget) with writing partner Shuki Levy. Remember, this was a couple of years before Saban became a major player in American television when he acquired the rights to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

As my memory serves, however, the Pizza Cats resurfaced a few years later for a 2nd go-round, right around the time another Saban entry, Eagle Riders, based on Japan's popular Gatchaman franchise (better known here in the US as Battle of the Planets). I may be wrong, of course.

Series writer Michael Airington, doing a mimic of actor Paul Lynde, recorded the theme for the American version of Pizza Cats, uploaded by Airhammer to YouTube:

Now, I never saw the show, so I can't give a fair rating. It amazes me, however, that the series has not been given another chance, even on the Anime Network (which only has an On Demand berth on Time Warner Cable to date).

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

For years, the NFL had couple of weekly syndicated highlight reel series airing on Sunday mornings before the games were played. Major League Baseball, under a directive from then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn, created their own highlight series in 1977. This Week In Baseball recapped the previous week's action in an entertaining half-hour montage, narrated by iconic broadcaster Mel Allen, who served as the series host until his passing in 1996. Future Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith took over as host for a time, but the series ultimately came to an end in 1998 after 22 seasons.

2 years later, This Week In Baseball was relaunched, this time airing on Fox as a precursor to their Game of the Week, and with a guest host each week, a la Saturday Night Live. Now, the series gives viewers an opportunity to see some of their favorite players at play off the field as well as on.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Even though Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics had been renewed by ABC for a 2nd season (albeit with a revised title as Scooby's All-Stars), Hanna-Barbera was commissioned by NBC to create a similar series for them. Unfortunately, spinning off some of the characters, like Yogi Bear & Huckleberry Hound, into this new series didn't work the way it was drawn up.

Yogi's Space Race was a galactic reboot of Wacky Races, which bowed 10 years earlier. The show's central villain, the Phantom Phink, along with his dog, Spot, was also given a dual identity as the heroic Captain Good (Spot became Clean Cat in one of those bizarre interspecies transmutations), and unlike Dick Dastardly, who never won a race, the Phink actually did win, in each of his identities!

You'll see a space disco in the open, a homage to "Star Wars", which was a mega-hit a year prior and is now an iconic franchise. There were three additional segments, which we'll feature in separate posts later on down the line, but here they are:

Galaxy Goof-Ups: Yogi & Huck are joined by two new characters---Quack-Up and Scare Bear, a perpetually frightened bruin, understandably, creating the most unlikely team of peace officers the galaxy has ever seen. Joe Besser, who'd reprised his Jeannie role as Babu over on Laff-a-Lympics, is Scare Bear in his final gig for H-B.

The Buford Files: Buford is a bloodhound whose owners, Woody & Cindy Mae, are amateur detectives seemingly more on the beam than the bumbling Sheriff Muletrain.

The Galloping Ghost: The title spirit is known simply as "Nugget Nose", an old prospector who now appears to aid the owners of a dude ranch.

Here's the intro, narrated by race announcer Gary Owens.

The series didn't make it to the halfway mark of the season before NBC split the show into three component parts. Buford & the Galloping Ghost would air at lunch time, as memory serves, with Galaxy Goof-Ups and the truncated Space Race airing earlier in the morning. The 90 minute format was bulldozed by ABC's lineup, forcing some changes, which actually forestalled the inevitable cancellation. It didn't help that with the Laff-a-Lympics reruns still airing, that meant Yogi was appearing on two networks at the same time. He would return, as previously documented, in Yogi's Treasure Hunt in the mid-80's.

It wasn't enough that Hanna-Barbera had Valley of the Dinosaurs on CBS as a counter-measure to the Kroffts' Land of the Lost on NBC. Seeing the Kroffts' usual cheaper-than-a-flea-market budget resulting in Land looking like it was produced on a college soundstage, H-B went for the downs with a live-action series of their own, set in prehistoric times.

While the Butlers of Valley and the Marshalls of Land were thrust backward in time, or so it seemed, Korg: 70,000 B. C. was firmly set somewhere in the Stone Age, which H-B had previously experimented with via the animated superhero, Mightor, 7 years earlier. The cast of unknowns, ultimately, proved to be Korg's undoing, as the series, like Valley, was cancelled after 1 season. The only names familiar to anyone as it relates to the series are the show's creator and co-producer, Fred Freiberger, and narrator Burgess Meredith (the Penguin from Batman). 70skidvid uploaded the open & close, stopping short of the rainbow H-B logo introduced that year, due to the fact that the clip is taken from an airing when the series resurfaced on TNT a few years ago.

Freiberger had served as a writer at H-B, having worked on the abysmal Josie & the Pussycats in Outer Space and the underappreciated Sealab 2020, and would later be a writer-producer on Space: 1999 & The Six Million Dollar Man, among others. Most fans will recall his contributions to the legendary Star Trek, which would be enough to give him some cred with the sci-fi crowd all by itself. Korg, if memory serves, aired directly opposite Land of the Lost and Shazam!, thus ending up a poor third in the ratings.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Magilla Gorilla found a way to tap into the teen demographic with this pop ditty sung by Little Eva ("The Loco-Motion"). Here's "Making With The Magilla":

If memory serves me correctly, Little Eva was never given screen credit. However, music & toon historians eventually made it public. I think "Making" might have made it onto a compilation CD years later, but I am not sure.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Animator Butch Hartman came over to Nickelodeon from Cartoon Network, and immediately struck gold with the wacky Fairly Oddparents. So what could he do for an encore? How about a superhero cartoon with a comic twist?

Danny Phantom bowed in 2004, and, like most Nick cartoons of the period, was played into the ground way too quickly.

Daniel Fenton's parents are professional ghost busters----or at least they claim to be, but we never seem to see them actually on a case. They built a ghost portal as a dimensional doorway between worlds. A test run failed, and they left it at that. Curious Danny, 14, decided to take a look, and accidentally activated the portal, resulting in his transmutation into a half-boy, half-ghost. The series open summarizes it all rather nicely:

Ultimately, Danny learned to control his new powers to become his city's secret guardian, but hunted by his parents, cluelessly unaware of their son's new dual identity, known only to the youth's two closest friends, Tucker and Samantha, and later, his older sister, Jazz. Nickelodeon terminated production on the series after 3 seasons, perhaps way too soon, some might say, but it is company policy for whatever reason. What do network executives know, anyway?

At the end of the 1990's, Cartoon Network embarked on a somewhat ambitious project. What they wanted to do was produce a series of house ads as "editorials" featuring some familiar characters. Only two such ads were produced.

This one features Fred Jones (Frank Welker), the team captain of Mystery, Incorporated. If you've been following the current series, you know by now that Fred has become obsessed with his girlfriend/teammate, Daphne Blake. One can surmise that the roots of this plot point came from this 61 second piece of stupidity, uploaded by WhenWasThatTV.

The ads were written and produced presumably with tongue firmly in cheek, but given the snarky attitudes of certain CN staffers since then, one cannot clearly be so certain anymore.......

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Jay Ward's next to last creation, Hoppity Hooper, bounded onto Saturday mornings in 1964 on ABC, 4 years after Ward had shopped a pilot to the networks.

The basic plot was similar to the serials over on The Bullwinkle Show (pka Rocky & His Friends), only in this case you had a frog (Hoppity), a fox ("Uncle" Waldo), and a bear (Fillmore), the latter carrying a trumpet, but not that good a player.

When the series went into syndication, for some reason, Uncle Waldo got top billing, as you'll see in the following clip. In fact, that's when I first discovered the series, several years after it'd gone out of production.

When the pilot was recorded in 1960, Alan Reed was the voice of Fillmore, but, as we all know, Reed soon landed the lead in The Flintstones, so Bill Scott, the voice of Bullwinkle, was cast as Fillmore. Hans Conreid (Uncle Waldo) narrates "The Frog Prince of Monomania", uploaded by TootsToons to YouTube:

Regrettably, Hoppity, Waldo, & Fillmore have gone back into limbo, as the series is nowhere to be found these days.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The US of Archie was the last series to feature Archie Andrews and his Riverdale buds on CBS, and, as with 1971's Archie's TV Funnies, tweaked the traditional format of the Archie series.

The core premise of this series was the gang discovered that their ancestors (who happened to be amazing lookalikes to the present day gang) played "intregal roles" in shaping different pieces of American history. New songs were written for the show, but there was a different singer fronting the band. Tom McKenzie, formerly of the Doodletown Pipers, a 60's folk group, took over for Ron Dante as the singing voice of Archie (otherwise played by Dallas McKennon). Since no musical numbers had been needed the previous three seasons, Dante and writing partner Andy Kim moved on to bigger things. Kim, in particular, enjoyed some chart success with 1973's "Rock Me Gently". You're forgiven if you've previously mistaken him for Neil Diamond after listening to the song the first time. Dante, as I've documented previously, acheived his biggest success as a producer and writing partner with Barry Manilow.

Unfortunately, as of now there are no full episodes, not even the opening titles, available to YouTube. Pterixa offers this music video, taken from the series finale, "The Wizard of Menlo Park", about Thomas Edison:

I wish I could identify the song, but there is no record of any song listing from this season. The US of Archie would cycle through one season's worth of episodes over two, and when it ended in 1976, it was also the end of Archie's 8 year run at CBS.

All was not lost, though. ABC took a chance on a live-action pilot that I remember seeing in '76, produced by James Komack (Welcome Back, Kotter, Chico & the Man), but burned it off in the summer of '76. Archie would return once more, this time on NBC, in 1977. Unfortunately, given Filmation's poor track record at NBC, The Archie-Sabrina Hour didn't last very long, and splitting the hour into separate half-hour components, Super Witch for Sabrina, and The Bang Shang Lallapalooza Show for Archie, did nothing but postpone the inevitable. Both series were cancelled in April 1978, steamrolled by ABC's dominant lineup.

Rating: A-. The US of Archie may be airing on Retro this summer, so check your listings!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Someone at WB thought it might be a good idea to give Krypto, the Superdog his own series, back in 2005, and gear the series for younger viewers.

Krypto debuted on Cartoon Network as a weekday entry in March 2005, and was picked up by Kids' WB! 18 months later. The idea was that Superman left Krypto in the care of an ordinary Earth boy. By the same token, Streaky, who was associated with Supergirl in the comics back in the day, was similarly given a home on Earth, giving Krypto a sidekick who was largely used as comedy relief. We'd also see Ace, the Bat-Hound, and Isis, Catwoman's pet. There would also be pet analogs of villains like Lex Luthor, the Joker, and the Penguin, to give Krypto his own Rogues' Gallery.

Batmitey uploaded the open:

If you can get past the goofy theme song, and enjoy the show, you'll get a few laughs and leave with a smile on your face. Currently, the series is airing on Boomerang.

Friday, July 1, 2011

From Archie's Funhouse comes this "Giant Jukebox" hit, uploaded by Pterixa. "Little By Little" didn't chart, but should've. By 1970, the Archies were already yesterday's news as far as Billboard was concerned.